After the traditionally uneventful months of July and August, September tends to bring substantial increase in web site traffic on DistroWatch, together with many exciting release announcements by major Linux vendors. Let's take a brief look at what we can expect to see in the next few months.

We'll start with the Debian project, which is, according to this schedule, expected to announce the release of stable Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "Sarge" on the 15th September. Since Debian releases are exceptionally rare (the current stable release 3.0 "Woody" is now more than 2 years old), this should bring relief to all users itching to upgrade their Debian servers to something less "ancient" than Woody's default kernel 2.2.20. But will Sarge come out on time? As the tried and tested Debian policy of "release when ready" takes precedence over schedules, there is always a possibility that Sarge will be further delayed. But whenever it comes, one thing remains certain: the release will indeed be stable, in the true sense of the word.

In the meanwhile, the big three commercial distributions (Red Hat's Fedora, Mandrakelinux and SUSE) will likely continue in their twice-per-year release cycles. Mandrakelinux tends to be the first of the three with a new release and, with the recent second beta of Mandrakelinux 10.1, it seems to be the farthest down the beta testing road at the moment. However, the developers haven't been able to keep up with the original release schedule falling behind by about a month already. The final release of Mandrakelinux 10.1 Community has been re-scheduled for the 7th September, but don't be surprised if it this date is postponed again.

By contrast, Fedora's release schedule seems a lot more realistic, with test1 already out in July, test2 scheduled for the 13 September, test3 for 3 October, and the final release of Fedora Core 3 expected on mirrors on the 21st of October. As for SUSE, the company normally announces their upcoming release about a month before the boxes ship to retailers in Germany. If it continues in its usual release cycle, we can expect a big Novell/SUSE release announcement during September. Will the upcoming SUSE LINUX include the much hyped new Novell Desktop, a GNOME/KDE hybrid containing the best features of each of the two leading desktop environments? We shall patiently wait for this one....

On the BSD front, one of the most eagerly awaited FreeBSD releases ever is the upcoming first production release of FreeBSD 5. The first two betas are out with only a couple of days behind schedule. Two more betas and two release candidates are still expected before the final release of FreeBSD 5.3 on the 3rd of October.

Of course, several smaller distributions are also preparing new releases. Lycoris should start shipping their Desktop/LX 1.4 any time now (the release was postponed due to last-minute bugs found after the press release announcing the product), while Linspire and Xandros are also rumoured to be working on new releases - both Linspire 5.0 and Xandros Desktop 3.0 should be out before Christmas. A press release announcing the final release of SimplyMEPIS 2004 is also expected shortly, while the never-ending stream of new distributions will no doubt brighten up many rainy autumn days of those of us living north of the equator.

Exciting times ahead, no?

Linux distribution chooser

Our friends at tuxs.org have sent us a link to their newly developed Linux distribution chooser, a wizard that can suggest the most suitable distribution for you based on your answers to a sequence of questions. This is a great concept, especially for those new to Linux, who are often overwhelmed by the number of available choices. Try it out and give the maintainers your feedback and suggestions for improvements.

Featured Distribution of the Week: Conectiva Linux

Conectiva Linux

Conectiva Linux celebrated its 9th birthday last Saturday. Founded in 1995 by Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo in Curitiba, Brazil, the distribution is not widely used outside of the largest Latin American country; yet it is one of the dark horses of the Linux distribution world, worthy of your attention.

Why is Conectiva an interesting distribution? Firstly, it has been an ardent supporter of Free Software since the very beginning of its existence. At one time or another the company employed several prominent personalities of the Free Software world; among them Marcelo Tosatti, the current maintainer of the Linux kernel 2.4 series, Alfredo Kojima, the lead developer of WindowMaker, and Everaldo Coelho, the designer of the widely used Conectiva Crystal icon set. The company is also well-known for developing APT for RPM, a Debian-style package management front-end for RPM packages, as well as Synaptic, a graphical RPM management utility. It is worth noting that, unlike many other commercial companies, Conectiva has always released all of their software and artwork under the GPL.

Conectiva Linux 10 was released in July 2004 and is available for free download from the distribution's mirrors. At about once per year, the official releases don't come as often as those of other major distributions, but those who prefer living on the cutting edge of Linux development can easily keep their software up-to-date. That's because Conectiva maintains a publicly accessible RPM package repository called "snapshot" which is updated frequently. Besides its native Brazilian Portuguese, the distribution also supports Spanish and English.

Next time you feel like installing a new distribution, give Conectiva Linux 10 a try - you won't be disappointed. Alternatively, try one of their frequently updated live CDs.

Conectiva Linux 10 - a great distribution, not only for Brazilians(full image size 435kB)

Released Last Week

Knoppix 3.6

Knoppix 3.6 has been released. From the changelog: "V3.6-2004-08-16 ('aKademy Release'). First release after LinuxTag 2004; kernel 2.6.7 (as an option) and 2.4.27; memtest86+ as boot option; captive-ntfs update; FreeNX-Server package from Fabian Franz; hardware detection updates and fixes; KDE 3.2.3 (which is still more stable than 3.3 in Debian); lots and lots of packageupdates from Debian/testing and unstable."

Minislack 0.2

A new version of the Slackware-based Minislack Linux distribution is out: "The new version of Minislack comes with kernel 2.6.7 and GCC 3.3.4, following the release of Slackware 10.0. At desktop level: the X server switches to Xorg, and default graphical environment becomes KDE with an elegant look inspired from Gnustep. WindowMaker is provided in CVS version with new antialiased fonts support. Of course Minislack provides essential tools for coding (Python 2.3.4, Perl 5.8.4, Vim 6.3.004, Kdevelop 3.0.4, Quanta 3.2.3, Kate), office production (GIMP 2.0.2, Koffice 1.3.1, CD burning tool K3B 0.11.12), as well as Internet software (Mozilla 1.7, Kmail 1.6.2), and more..." You can find the announcement on thedistribution's home page.

Feather Linux 0.5.7

Feather Linux 0.5.7 has been released. From the changelog: "Midnight Commander now has vfs support, and an internal editor with syntax highlighting; added scripts to easily switch window managers; made some small changes to X settings autodetection; added ability to restore configuration from the Internet - boot with 'restore=net url=<url>'; fixed Opera startup glitch; added ReiserFS support to HD install script (still experimental - you may have problems on bootup); added udhcpd, a tiny DHCP server; updated Dillo to 0.8.0...."

Yoper Linux 2.1

Yoper Linux 2.1 has been released: "The 'fastest out of the box' OS, Yoper Linux V series, continues its global climb with the next stable release of V2 tagged 2.1.0, a powerful OS built upon the proven speed technologies that have made its predecessors famous. Known to be a commercial strength desktop solution at 0 cost, this release provides the power user with many new features, encompassing Reiser4 support for the root file system, new non-destructive NTFS resizing, graphical partitioning, option to use GRUB or LILO boot loaders, a new clustered control panel, KDE 3.3.0 final, Linux kernel 2.6.8.1, default firewall and the OpenOffice.org office suite, all provided on 1 CD." Read the rest of the announcement here.

Kurumin Linux 3.2

The developers of Brazil's Kurumin project have released Kurumin Linux 3.2. Several packages have been updated to synchronise Kurumin Linux with the current package set in Debian Sarge and to facilitate future updates. Other changes include updates and bug fixes to Clica-aki, Kurumin's centralised system administration utility; several new "magic icons" for installing RealPlayer and for providing support for some proprietary audio and video formats; upgraded the QEMU processor emulator to version 0.6.2; removed Dillo... More details are available in this release announcement (in Portuguese).

Buffalo Linux 1.4

Buffalo Linux 1.4.0 has been released: "The final release of Buffalo Version 1.4.0 is now available for download. Changes from 1.4.0rc2 include: IceWM 1.2.16, two graphical login options (XDM/GDM), GNOME-pilot added to the GNOME package, and many bug fixes including fix for sound using ALSA-1.0.6. Threewindow managers are now available: Buffalo IceWM, XFce, and GNOME. Version 1.4.0 is the first to use Xorg and the new 2.6.8.1 kernel. An update of the base install package from 'rc2' is available here. Refer to the Update_Notes in this directory for other update info." The announcement, changelog.

Damn Small Linux 0.8.0

This is a new release of Damn Small Linux, a very light, business card-size live CD with support for hard disk installation. From the changelog: "Change log for 0.8.0: updated kernel and modules; new boot floppy; new uci single file cloop extensions; call powerdown.sh from reboot; updated Xsnapshot; new xcuriser; updated myDSLgui; updated frugal_install; updated dsl-hdinstall; updated mkmydsl; updated frugal_lite.sh more cloop devices."

Austrumi 0.8.8

The Slackware-based business-card size Austrumi live CD project has produced an updated release, version 0.8.8. What's new? "Added gv - a PostScript and PDF previewer; added xwhois - an graphical whois client for the X; updated AbiWord, beaver, iptables, Opera, front end installer to hard disk (beta); updated kernel (2.6.8.1); fixed same bugs." You can find the full changelog and other details on the distribution's project page.

Navyn OS 2004.08

The Gentoo-based Navyn OS project has released a new version of its distribution. New in 2004.08: "new kernel 2.6.8.1; now Xorg instead XFree86;; completely rebuilt fromscratch; added porthole, program with GUI for installing programs from portage; now there are 3 installers; you can choose which packages to install from CDROM to hard disk; new drivers for WiFi cards; added two games: abuse and jumpnbump; digital cameras are supported by program gtkam; added hard disk and CPU temperature monitors to GKrellM; added vixie-cron and syslog-ng; added xPDF for reading PDF files; added Flash plugins for Opera and Firefox web browsers...." More details in the changelog.

SLAX 4.1.4

SLAX 4.1.4 is out: "SLAX 4.1.4, the 180MB live CD with KDE 3.3, was released today! It features a lot of bugfixes and news, for example: added Linux kernel 2.4.28-pre2 with SATA (libsata) support compiled in; added KDE 3.3.0, K3B 0.11.14; added cheatcodes.txt to CD's root directory; added MPlayer 1.0-pre5, recompiled with many options; fixed GUI script to better handle X auto-configuration; the Czech version of SLAX is available at slax.cz. Some other languages for SLAX are available as modules on this page." See the full changelog for details about otherchanges and improvements.

The OpenBSD web site has published details about the next release - OpenBSD 3.6 due on 1st November and activated pre-orders: "We have just activated pre-orders for the OpenBSD 3.6 release, which will be released and start shipping Nov 1, 2004. As always, those who pre-order will receive their CDs first. There is a new 3-CD set and a new poster which can be ordered from here. An OpenBSD 3.6 T-Shirt will be added in the coming weeks. OpenBSD 3.6 contains numerous improvements over previous releases - most notably SMP support on i386 and amd64. Please keep in mind that this project is completely funded by CD sales and donations from our user community." For details about new features in OpenBSD 3.6, please see the product's release page and the current changelog. The 3-CD set of OpenBSD 3.6 costs US$45.

Vector Linux 4.3

Expect a new Vector Linux stable release later this week: "Version 4.3 is about to go final based on the rc-1 release. If anyone has any issues that haven't been already covered under the rc-1 release please let me know now. I am looking at September 1 as a release date." The above quote comes from the distribution's message board.

Impi Linux 2.0

Tectonic provides some interesting information about the upcoming release of Impi Linux 2.0, expected shortly: "Impi Linux 2 is the next generation of original South African-developed open source software. Unlike Impi 1, version 2 is not based on any existing Linux distributions such as Red Hat and Debian, but is built from the ground up. Ross Addis, chairman of the Gauteng Linux Users Group says Impi 2 is a 'purely South African-developed open source technology'." The full story.

Web Site News

New distribution additions

The Athene Operating System. Athene is a commercial operating system developed by Rocklyte Systems for use in the home and office. Athene combines years of Rocklyte's R&D with the latest Linux technology to create one of the fastest operating systems available today. With boot times as fast as four seconds and advanced graphics technology not available in standard Linux distributions, Athene may be the best low-cost alternative to Windows for your computer desktop.

Càtix. Càtix is a Linux live CD based on Knoppix and with support for the the Catalan language.

PilotLinux. PilotLinux is a thin client live CD. This means that when you boot from a PilotLinux CD your PC has been temporarily transformed into a thin client machine. If a settings file is supplied booting from a PilotLinux CD will automatically connect you to your terminal server. Otherwise the PilotLinux GUI will be displayed and give you the ability to manually enter the server address.

Santa Fe Linux. Santa Fe Linux is a commercial desktop distribution with advanced hardware auto-detection and some of the best desktop applications open source has to offer. Santa Fe Linux is a Debian-based live CD and features X.org with automatic binary driver configuration for NVIDIA and ATI video cards.

Xfld. Xfld provides an alternative operating system for common i386 machines which are able to boot from CD-ROM. Xfld provides approximately 2GB of (transparently compressed) software. Among those you can find tools like the GIMP, OpenOffice.org, which is partly compatible with MS Office, Mozilla for browsing the web, Apache web-server, and many more. Xfld features XFce as its default desktop environment and therefore enables the user to test-drive this extensive and fancy desktop enviroment at will.

BeatrIX. BeatrIX is a less-than-200MB distribution based on the latest Linux kernel, GNOME 2.6, Firefox, Evolution, GAIM and several other useful programs. It is aimed at people who just want to get the job done with the minimum amount of hassle and it does that with a plomb. It is designed to run on any Pentium-class computer with at least 128MB of RAM and will run on Via's small-footprint motherboards, which it was compiled on. The goal of BeatrIX is to make a distribution that is simple enough for anyone to use on any computer. 0.1 is a live CD, 0.2 will be a hard-drive install, if desired.

MostlyLinux. MostlyLinux is a Linux distribution based on Fedora Core and developed in India.

"If you're new to UNIX-like OSs, pick a distribution that focuses on easy installation, such as Mandrakelinux or SUSE LINUX. For informative reviews of various distributions, check out DistroWatch. Once you've selected one, go to the web site for that distribution and check the list of supported hardware against your component list. If you can't find a distribution that supports your hardware, you're better off not installing Linux, unless you're ready to spend serious time learning more about it."

That's all for this week, see you all next Monday :-)

Ladislav Bodnar

Reader Comments

1 • Arch Linux (by Luk van den Borne at 2004-08-30 12:20:00 GMT)
What about Arch Linux? I think we can expect 0.7 Wombat shortly. The first beta has already been released. Oh and Ladislav, you once promised you'd write a review about Arch ;-)2 • RE: Arch Linux (by ladislav at 2004-08-30 12:29:00 GMT)...you once promised you'd write a review about Arch.

I did write one: http://lwn.net/Articles/40952/. It's not a full review, just something to keep the promise :-) Unfortunately, I don't have time for more comprehensive reviews any more - they take up a lot of time and effort. Sorry :-(3 • What about UserLinux? (by Andrius on 2004-08-30 12:30:18 GMT)http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;578519959;fp;2;fpid;14 • RE: What about UserLinux? (by ladislav at 2004-08-30 13:11:33 GMT)
Good point. Unfortunately, the UserLinux web site gives no information about release schedules. I would imagine they will need to create a more presentable web site before they launch the product -that's if they really want to convert businesses to UserLinux.5 • the udev surprise (by Leo on 2004-08-30 14:04:14 GMT)
If you lurk a bit on Mandrake dev-list (cooker), you'll notice that a big deal of problems with Mandrake 10.1 (and perhaps part of the reasons for the delays) is the suprising kernel switch from "devfs" into "udev".

Even the FAQ are embarassing. These sort of changes belong to unstable branches. Of course, the new Linux kernel direction means to get development features in the stable branch. Really, really confusing

Maybe this is matter for DW weekly next week ladislav ?

CheersLeo

PD: welcome back from the long trip, hope you enjoyed it!6 • Tuxs.org (by Vectrix at 2004-08-30 14:38:38 GMT)
How many distributions are on that test ??? I only get:

MandrakeFedoraSUSE7 • Linux chooser (by Guido on 2004-08-30 14:40:09 GMT)
Interesting idea, but the current implementation is mostly useless. Some random notes:* The number of possible outcomes is very limited: at first glance only Mandrake, Fedore, Knoppix and YellowDog.* It would have been nice, if they would suggest an alternative besides their favorite.* The questions are not geared towards complete newbies. For instance what is a "technical version"? I guess they mean to ask if the prospective user is familiar with Unix commands (I could be completely wrong there though).8 • RE: Tuxs.org (by Greyweather on 2004-08-30 15:46:16 GMT)
"How many distributions are on that test ?"

9Yellow Dog LinuxGentoo PPC LinuxPCLinuxOSMandrake LinuxSlax LinuxSuSE LinuxDamn Small LinuxKnoppixFedora (twice)9 • Distro choser (by colnago at 2004-08-30 16:19:36 GMT)
I only got Mandrake and Fedora when I looked around there. I was surprised that Fedora was the technical distribution. They should have just used the user agent from the browser and a random number to tell people to use yellow dog, mdk, fc2, or suse.10 • about review subjects (by Penguin on 2004-08-30 17:16:24 GMT)
I'd suggest that you could try to get reviews especially of yet unreviewed distributions. In case someone might be interested in writing those reviews... At least I'm a bit tired of reading a review of new releases of Fedora/Redhat, SUSE, Mandrake, & Slackware reviews every half a year or so. - plus reviews of all the dozens of live CDs out there.

Not yet reviewed interesting distributions that have already existed longer than for a one or two releases are for example: DeLi Linux (good for the oldest and slowest PCs), Tinysofa (server), ClarkConnect Broadband Gateway, Buffalo (easier Slackware) & Lunar (source-based),. Or reading a review of some BSD-based live CD would be interesting for a change too.

Just my 2 cents worth - and if somebody happened to be looking for an interesting distro to review... ;-)11 • NavynOS (by d00m3d on 2004-08-30 17:53:01 GMT)
The download link at ftp://ftp.illx.org/ only accept max 5 global clients. It is always full and unaccessible. Pls point it to other fast mirror such as w2p.org or ibiblio.org.BTW, 2004.08 made a lot of enhancements compare to previous releases but the CD burning problem originated from kernel 2.6.8.1 seems unresolved.12 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2004-08-30 19:45:40 GMT)
That distro chooser is terrible.

It suggested fedora for comps older then 2 years. My comp is exactly 2 years old and fedora is _too fucking slow_.

I know I want a debian based distro so I can actually install packages, but there is no way to refine the search that much.13 • Debian stable (by Joe P on 2004-08-30 22:08:47 GMT)
I am sure the Debian mirrors will be hammered as soon as the announcement of a new stable version is out. So should those of us about to do an install try Woody and apt-get later or wait for the FTP installer for Sarge?14 • julain (by Re: Debian stable on 2004-08-30 23:59:06 GMT)
yeah, but isnt it you can use bit torrent to download the image?15 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2004-08-31 04:53:44 GMT)
That distro chooser is well done, great idea. Only needs to add more questions and possibles distros.16 • Distro Chooser (by Wide Eyed Sleeper on 2004-08-31 07:16:14 GMT)
Something about the distro chooser just isn't right. you can't decide a distro after answering 3(or was it 4) questions. It took me damn near 2 months to decide to use MDK92 and about a month to decide to change to Slackware10.17 • Distro Chooser (by Aussie on 2004-08-31 09:38:23 GMT)
Distro Chooser was a joke...

It's like some school student whipped something up in his lunchbreak.

I went there *thinking* that I'd find something intelligent, but it's really a basic "expert system" with only a few possible outcomes.

Waste of my time...18 • synaptic is not a front-end to rpm (by solstice on 2004-08-31 13:43:29 GMT)
as far as i can remember the times when i used to use debian, synaptic was a front-end to dpkg (and deb package) not rpm ...

and what i see on the synaptic home page is:Synaptic is a graphical package management program for apt. It provides the same features as the apt-get command line utility with a GUI front-end based on Gtk+ or WINGs.19 • RE: synaptic is not a front-end to rpm (by ladislav at 2004-08-31 13:52:40 GMT)as far as i can remember the times when i used to use debian, synaptic was a front-end to dpkg (and deb package) not rpm

That's because Debian doesn't use RPM, but Conectiva does. But you are right, it's probably more accurate to say that Synaptic is a graphical front-end for apt (which, in case of Conectiva, is a port of Debian's apt for RPM-based distributions, rather than the original apt for DEB-based distributions).20 • No subject (by Leo on 2004-08-31 15:08:19 GMT)
RE: synaptic is not a front-end to rpm

I think there is some confusion:

* RPM and DEB are package formats* dpkg and rpm are command line simple interfaces to handle individual packages* apt, urpmi and apt-rpm are command line wrappers that allow handling dependencies and other issues when managing several packages at once* There are GUI front ends to apt and urpmi, synaptic being one of them

So, you have, for instance,

conectiva:RPM -> rpm -> apt-rpm -> synaptic

debian:DEB -> dpkg -> apt -> synaptic

mandrake:RPM -> rpm -> urpmi -> rpmdrake (control center)

Suse:RPM -> rpm -> Yast (control center)21 • No subject (by theweakend on 2004-09-01 00:49:10 GMT)
isn't free bsd comeing soon as well?22 • SimplyMEPIS is out allready (by tipps at 2004-09-01 18:15:11 GMT)
still a hidden downloadlink but the final of SimplyMEPIS 2004 is avaiable at http://www.mrbass.org/linux/mepis/23 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2004-09-01 19:33:02 GMT)
The distro chooser recommends Gentoo for technical users who want to install a distribution on their 2 year old pc. 200 hours compilation time ahoy!24 • looking for a plomb (by John Cherry at 2004-09-02 03:08:48 GMT)
Thanks for qualifying your remark about rainy autumn days with the bit about 'north of the equator' -- far too many people promise software releases in 'spring', for example, as if the entire world shares the same (north american) seasons.25 • RE: looking for a plomb (by ladislav at 2004-09-02 03:47:36 GMT)
I know. I spent ten years of my life in South Africa, so I know that for many people Christmas doesn't mean cold weather and snow, but rather beaches, swimming pools, outdoor parties... Yes, I do try to avoid mentioning names of seasons on the Internet.26 • Youve been Distrowatched ?? (by Gavin Denby at 2004-09-02 04:01:56 GMT)
Anyone wondered about beartrIX ? seems like your not alone.

A quick check of the website shows that the traffic for this has exploded, and the poor old website and downloadable iso is being swamped.

Looks like mini isos are getting a popularity that makes me wonder if there is a lot of old hardware out there just looking for a nice linux distro to install on it.

Either that or poeple are looking for speed improvements over the traditional big 5.

Personnaly I suspect its the former. ..... And ITX boards can fit into some pretty awesome places.27 • Distribution chooser (by Terry Ross at 2004-09-07 02:07:38 GMT)
I didn't expect much when I visited, but was willing to give it a try. Aside from saying that it vaguely reminds me of one of my 1979 Atari BASIC introductory programs, I'll hold back on any disparaging comments. As for the recommendation that I try Gentoo, I think I'll just stay with Source Mage GNU/Linux, thanks all the same heheh.